Keep The Line Moving

by Cliff Corcoran |
August 27, 2009 12:55 pm

The Yankees have scored 47 runs over their last five games. That works out to 9.4 runs per game. They’ve scored a minimum of eight runs in four of those five contests, all of which have come against the top two teams in the Wild Card race. That’s what 28-year-old righty Dustin Nippert has to contend with this afternoon.

Nippert has made just seven previous starts this year. Just one of them was a quality start. This is just his fifth start in regular rotation. In the previous four the Rangers have gone 1-3 despite Nippert’s average 4.50 ERA and strong strikeout rate.

Nippert goes up against A.J. Burnett, who is coming off his miserable outing in Boston. In August, Burnett has sandwiched three quality starts between two total stinkers in which he’s given up 16 runs in 9 2/3 innings.

Jose Molina catches Burnett this afternoon, but not because of the head-butting A.J. and Jorge Posada were doing in Boston. Molina was scheduled to catch today’s day-game-after-night-game regardless of the pitcher, and the foul ball Posada took off his left ring finger last night cinched it. The rest of the lineup is the usual suspects, with Johnny Damon returning to left field.

[90] Reagan had a life outside of politics and also appealed to people from both parties. Kennedy has been a political animal his whole life and hasn't been particularly popular outside liberal circles. Reagan was also a president, which is a very rare and special distinction. I think alot of the outpouring is more for the Kennedy name than for the Senator himself, at least outside of the beltway.

[91] He had a life outside of politics, but it's his political career that defined him. Its the core of why he matters in a wide scope, I don't think there would've been a week of public mourning for "The Errol Flynn of the B-Movies."

He absolutely warrants special treatment because of his 8 years as President, but one can certainly make the argument that Kennedy's 47 year national career had more lasting impact. I'm not saying that, but you COULD make the argument.

Reagan's supposed appeal to "both parties" is defined largely through the "Reagan Democrats," Kennedy counted Orrin Hatch, Lindsey Graham, and Trent Lott (and others) among his closest friends and allies...so I think their appeal to the opposite side of the aisle was comparable.

I also don't get the comparison between Reagan appealing to a wide range of the electorate and Kennedy being a good friend to men with whom he worked closely for 20 years. One appeal is ideological and the other is personal.

[101] I wouldn't be surprised at all. When a Senator accumulates power he has the ability to bring home the pork. Chuck Schumer is that way in NY as was the man he replaced, Al D'Amato (who was called Senator Pothole).

[124] ERA may not be a good indicator of ability, but it is a very good indicator of performance. Other factors definitely play into it, but ultimately, ERA defines a performance. Neyer is way too quick ascribe things to luck. Of course, luck is often the residue of design.

[126] There are better metrics to assess a pitcher's performance than WHIP and ERA.

[128] Proctor's workload hasn't been out of the ordinary; he went from 133 to 85 to 69 to 87 to 102 to 86 innings. Having said that I wish Girardi used Hughes more, even if it meant implementing rules.

[142] It depends on exactly what you're trying to judge. Using ERA means you are going to be giving pitchers credit for some good luck and blame for some bad luck. (The component that isn't predictive is luck, to a first approximation.)

[144] Luck aside, runs are the name of the game. Once the game is over, creidt goes out the window. All the metrics from this game will say AJ Burnett was excellent, but he gave up 3 runs in 6 innings. You can point to a whole host of mitigating factors, but this game boils down to three batter stretch that AJ let get away from him. I prefer to hold him responsible for that outcome.

[147] If a pitcher can throw 200 MPH but gives up 4 runs a game because the catcher can't really catch his pitches, he is a poor performer. Once the game is over, all that matters is how many runs were given up versus how many were scored.

[148] I prefer to give no credit or blame for luck. So maybe that's just a fundamental difference.

Anyway, I guess we agree that it's better for the future to have a pitcher who's given up a bunch of unlucky runs than a guy who's luckily prevented runs. So, this game is a good sign for AJ, but plainly not a good result.

[151] The only problem with that is AJ has an entire career of his ERA lagging his ability. My point was after watching him this season, I can now see why that it is. I still like AJ and think he is worth having, but I've alway thought he should be a dominant ace and never really new what kept getting in the way.

Ron Washington has impressed me in this series...he is using his best relievers for more than a few batters and in the right spot, he bunts with his lesser hitters and didn't show any sentimentality with Nippert in the 4th. It's only three games, and maybe they were his best, but I would add him to the list of managers I'd rather have over Girardi.

[155] Burnett's failure is his responsibility because the game situation clearly dictated that he be in it. Swisher should not have been bunting, so I don't blame him for failing. Similarly, Coke should not have been in the game, so I don't blame him for givng up three runs. A manager's job is to utilize his players appropriately. I'd think to think that even Girardi realizes that when your starter is perfect through three innings, you leave him in for the fourth.

[159] Not to reopen the Swisher debat BUT just because Swisher shouldn't have been bunting in that situation doesn't mean his failure to properly execute a fairly mundane (relatively speaking of course) offensive task isn't his fault...just as Coke's inability to get lefties out and making a boneheaded play on a sac bunt that went directly to A-Rod is on him and him alone.

As things stand, I think all of the potential post season managers are far less likely to screw up their team than is Girardi, so the Yankees will be playing with a handicap. Like with Torre in his later years, I think the Yankees are going to remain a great regular season team that struggles in the playoffs until they hire a competent manager. I really hope Girardi's mandate is to win the World Series because if simply making the playoffs saves his job, the Yankees will be stuck in the same cycle.

Hopefully the White Sox can win one tonight because 5 games is starting to make a race of it. Meanwhile, in a potential playoff preview, the Yankees inconsistent starters (Joba) and awful manager were kind of exposed.

[167] Oh I'm not absolving him of all of his missteps, I just think his supposed incompetence is way overblown relative to all other managers in the majors. I mean if we all decided we we're going to spend 3 straight weeks watching, lets just say, Phillies games we'd come away from it thinking Charlie Manuel was half-a-step above a mouth breathing moron.

I just think both success and failure are a team result, it wouldn't be right if Girardi got no credit for being at the helm of a team that coming into September is looking like the best team in the AL but when they lose 2 of 3 to the Rangers he's the second coming of Stump.

[171] I guess I am not interested in how he compares to other managers. As someone who watches nearly every inning, I just know how often I have completely disagreed with his decisions, many of which eventually had a major hand in losing. In this series, you had the Swisher bunt and the failure to use Hughes. If either of those decisions was not made, I think the Yankees would have an exponentially better chance of winning both games. These aren’t obscure points of strategy. They are bleedingly obvious mistakes.

[172] Well if you're not going to judge his ability relative to other managers then how can you really hope to measure it? Obviously it's not the best measuring stick in the world, but it's really the only one. You're never gonna find the manager you ALWAYS agree with, you just hope to find the one you disagree with least.

[173] There are other competent managers available, including one who I think was among the better game managers in the team's recent history. If I wanted to give the Yankees the best chance to win a World Series, I would fire Girardi and hire Buck Showalter without a second thought.

For some reason, that was a very frustrating series. Maybe the whole leaving a small village on base thing. I came into the series with mixed feelings, but once it started wanted nothing but wins. Texas would not be a pleasant opponent (although I think that team may be in for a rude awakening if they think taking two of three in YS in August is the same thing as what they'll see in October).

My memory is too foggy at the moment to make a rational argument, but there have been a number of times over the last month when I've felt Girardi has made the exact *right* move in spots both obviously and not quite as obviously important.

I really think the Yanks played a shitty series against the Rangers more than anything else. Joba was absolutely dreadful and buried his team, the bats blew opportunity after opportunity, and we sprinkled some errors over an already sickeningly sweet shit souffle of opponent two out and 0-2, 1-2 hits. AJ deserved better, but it was still infuriating to see him undermine his awesome stuff and 5 2/3rds of strength with 1/3 of an inning of maddening crappiness.

We HAVE to punish the stupid White Sox - they're starting to pull my "meaningless stupid team that I have temporary, disproportionate anger towards." Guillen is a massive douche, and they have played the MOST feckless series against the Red Sox - just a disgusting mix of untimeliness, gutlessness, bad managing, suckiness - they need to be punished, and they've put us into a position where we need to punish them.

Team needs to recommit to a better approach, in the batter's box and in the field. Cano has been so lazy running out his outs, it's hard to watch.

[174] Except there's nothing to suggest that Showalter would give the team a better chance at winning a championship.

He was forced out coming off of a great '94 and a furious comeback and playoff collapse (featuring more than a few questionable game decisions) in '95 for a guy with a below .500 lifetime record...so NATURALLY the guy with the losing record goes to the playoffs every year and wins 6 pennants and 4 championships. Just goes to show its impossible to predict who the right guy for the right team is going to be, its a total roll of the dice.

[177] And not only that, his second crack at the playoffs didn't go too well either. Bounced a year later, and the guy who takes over for him wins a championship despite trying to give the series away.

[178] EXACTLY! Brenly wasn't just a bad game manager, he was downright horrendous...it was like he was teaching a seminar on how to get fired out there. And yet he gets a ring while Buck sits in Bristol getting hugged by Harold.

[143] Whoaaaaaaa - FIP is about as easy to understand as tying your shoes. And at the moment, my opinion is that it is a piece of shit statistic, and used way to often with ridiculous sample sizes. Just look at the formula - it reeks of oversimplification, puts the HR factor off the charts, They already admit that it doesn't work for knuckleballers - but I suspect there are many other pitchers it does not accurate assess. It's been heavily criticized, and there are adaptations of it that have been created to address some of its problems. I do not like plain old FIP.

I dunno, I do understand leaving Cone in there. Not too sure about the 3-2 slider. Even though he was lit up the night before, I was a bit surprised that Wetteland wasn't out there to nail it down (he did pitch 3 scoreless innings in game 2, and did get the save in game 1). Rivera was a nice surprise, I'm sure he could've played a bigger role in that series.

Game 4 was pretty wild. Game 2 was the best game I had ever attended until Cone's perfect game in 99.

I thought Showalter handled the 1995 ALDS well, even if he probably should have gone to Wetteland in game 5 (although I though going to Black Jack was a good idea at the time). Shwoalter's problem has never been managing the game...it's been managing relationships. I am pretty confident that after his experiences in Texas and Arizona, he has learned to ease off a bit. Besides, this team is very low maintenance with the exception of a few players. What the Yankees need is a manager who is exceptionally well prepared and very savy from a strategy standpoint. Showalter is both of those things.

Huh, I left this game with the Yanks down 3-2. Upon my return I found the game over, 7-2 Rangers. Did not expect that. Seems like the Yankees hitters had a bad day. Two runs isn't gonna cut it. The Rangers taking 2 of 3 at Yankee Stadium is bad too. I'm not in love with the idea of losing a game in the standings either. Hopefully the Red Sox lose tonight.

Burnett was okay. If Chamberlain turned in this performance, people would be calling it a gem.

I didn't get to see Girardi screw anything up, but like I said, seems like the batters weren't getting it done today, more than anything else.

you make some great points.
your explanation of what you like about Ron Washington's managing [158] is very clear, with concrete examples. I appreciate that.

but, OTOH [185]I am pretty confident that after his experiences in Texas and Arizona, he has learned to ease off a bit.
there's pretty much no basis for that statement. Until you're actually in the clubhouse with someone on a regular basis, you're basically guessing/trusting the media's reports. Considering Showalter hasn't been in the clubhouse regularly since his experiences in Texas, even he isn't exactly sure how his current managing persona has changed from before.

I pretty much agree with Raf [180] on Showalter. There's got to be a fairly simple reason why he hasn't managed in years.

According to the New York Post's Page Six an "insider" tells the paper that Jeter and "Friday Night Lights" star Minka Kelly are engaged.
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Well.... that would certainly kill any future sleepovers for ARod.

[184] I'm going to assume that you understood that anyone who posted what I posted recognizes the limits of that statistic, and were just stating the obvious.

I do have some serious concerns about FIP as the proper direction of repositioning the basic concept of something like ERA - from what I can tell, there are better replacements available, and I have plenty of ideas (but neither the data resources/computational muscle power/time) as to what things I would put into a reconfigured stat.

ERA is obviously limited. FIP just seems like a terribly imperfect effort to replace it.

[189] I am basing my opinion of Showalter on three things: (1) Interviews he has given in which he has admitted to be a little too anal, particularly during his stint in Arizona. (2) Comments from Michael Kay, who is very close to Showalter. (3) His personality on Baseball Tonight. He definitely seems more relaxed as a media person, which I think would actually help him deal better with them on the other side.

[191] I agree with much of what you said. I would also add that while ERA is imperfect, at least it is only a measure of what happened. ERA just tells you how many earned runs were allowed per nine innings. It doesn't pretend to do anything more. FIPS, however, is sometimes portrayed as a magic determinant of what MIGHT have happened under static conditions.

[193] I'm sorry, but that's really not very convincing, it's easily explained as lobbying for another managing position ("Take me back, please! I promise I've learned! I'll be better this time! I've changed! REALLY!"),with help from buddy M.Kay. Even Larry Bowa can seem like an easy-going guy in a TV studio, far from the field, when he is commenting on games for which he has no stake in the outcome.

Hey, Team. Home from the Game with the kid and nephew. First of all, the Stadium was nice, but by no means nice enough to justify itself compared to the old place, imo. I did really appreciate just how reminiscent of the old place it is. There were times I actually settled in only to realize later that I was not, in fact, in the ballpark of my childhood. So that's a good thing.
And the al fresco aisles really are fabulous. A great feature. Again, not quite great enough, but credit where it's due.

As to the game itself? Horse shit. By the time we were issued our sixth walk with one run to show for it while they'd been issued two with three runs to show for it, I was mad.

Mad, mad, mad.

It's a good thing we have a lead because I'd have really been throwing things otherwise. As it was, I was able to slough it off easily enough.

Hope I get to go to another game this season. The experience really was every bit as enjoyable as ever. It's a gorgeous field.

Speaking of which, I caught a glimpse of the great void where the old field used to be on the 4, through the sliver in the Stadium. It was deeply unsettling.

I won't say it was as unsettling as suddenly not having the World Trade Center be there, but it was the same genre of unsettlement. It looked like an apocalyptic dream.

I'm someone who loves numbers but has been kind of busy for the last few years, so I'll only start to examine a particular advanced statistic when it starts to get shoved down my throat repeatedly or if it somehow piques my interest at the right moment when I have a little time on my hands.

FIP, though it's been around longer, has seemed to be a big hit this summer, and from everything I can tell so far, I dislike it. Looking at DICE, is the only difference between FIP and DICE the use of HBP and a slightly different adjusting number?

dERA definitely looks complicated.

I always think the big thing people can lose with statistics is the core idea: the goal should always be to reflect reality more accurately, to strip away *real* things so that we are left with the thing we want to examine - I like to think of statistics very visually, almost imagining myself erasing the elements (a third baseman, an excess of foul territory, a really, really stupid wall from a glorified softball stadium, etc.) that I want to strip out so that I can compare the one thing to the other.

I like to believe that this approach makes sure that you hew closer to reality as you push beneath the surface. Remember when people thought defense was overrated and unquantifiable? I wrote a very strong 5/8ths of an article destroying cERA, but also the "proof" that there was no difference between one defensive catcher and another, including all sorts of statistical proof of the inadequacy of the article's positions, and then had my attention diverted. It was obvious to me, from the first moment of looking at what the guy - I think he may have been a university prof - was doing with his catching statistics was ignoring all the realities of what makes or might make two backstops different.

Sometimes thinking about the differences that you know exist or that you think might exist, or that you think could exist, and then trying to statistically represent them to see if they hold up can be a better approach. Just throwing together a bunch of numbers can lead you to make huge mistakes in representing reality. Imo.

[194] The pitch that I knew was going to yield a home run for sure was Burnett's. I knew it with all my heart that Kinsler's HR was coming. I wasn't quite so bothered because I was certain we were going to score a lot more.

Why so much hate for Coke, though? When he's bad, it seems to go really bad, but he's had many more good outings than bad ones over the last two months, including some reasonably big spots, no? Particularly when used as a LOOGY for one or two batters, I've liked what I've seen.

I know he was atrocious today. Of course, I don't think it helped him to have ARod stumble right into his kitchen to stand there and be all obstacle-like when he tried to field the bunt. And I think that rattled him. Anyone have a stat for that? "Fielding success on ground balls when interfered with by an all-star third baseman with an only partially repaired hip and sometimes questionable judgment." Or even just how to strip that sort of event out of broader performance...

[201] Wait - the gutless White Sox have finally done something right and put an end to the ridiculous dancing through the rain drops without getting wet that The Sawx New Japanese ACE!!^! has been doing?

I've been so angry with their performance that it makes me all the more likely to go ballistic if we don't handle them at the Stadium.

National pastime. The military is just as American as baseball. There were a lot of ballplayers that served. Bob Feller, for one holds his military accomplishments in higher esteem than his baseball accomplishments.

wrote a very strong 5/8ths of an article destroying cERA, but also the “proof” that there was no difference between one defensive catcher and another

Overall, there really isn't... I would suspect that cERA would fall to the variances of SSS, anyway. Defensive wizards behind the plate are nice, but I'd be willing to wager that given a choice, a team would go with a catcher than can hit over a catcher who can't but has a good glove.

What diverted your attention, I may ask.

Anyone have a stat for that? “Fielding success on ground balls when interfered with by an all-star third baseman with an only partially repaired hip and sometimes questionable judgment.”

[195] I am not trying to convince you. The only people who need to be convinced would be a prospective employer. From my standpoint, I am confident that Showalter has learned from some past mistakes on the people side, but to be honest, I think his accumen as a game manager would still make him an attractive choice for this team. If the Yankees could make one deadline acquisition, I think a swap of Girardi for Showalter would make the biggest difference. I hope I am either wrong or the Yankee talent proves supreme, but I have a feeling this same conversation will be ongoing in October.

[213] It seems strange that you were presenting evidence to support your point if you weren't trying to convince anyone. You definitely seem confident about Showalter is a different man than he was, that's apparent. I'm equally confident that he's a control freak that tends to rub a lot of folks the wrong way once the pressure of a baseball season starts mounting. There's quite a few more writers hounding you constantly and more tabloid banner headlines mocking you and calling you out in NY than in TEX or ARI.

I think Girardi is a reasonably good manager, capable of delivering a World Serious Championship. Right now the Yankees should be considered the favorite or among the top 2 or 3 favorites to win it all. If they don't, it's most likely going to be CC, AJ, Andy &/or Joba who is the biggest reason.